whether you are liberal, conservative, Dem, GOP, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Christian or Buddhist. Whether you are Israeli, Pakistani, Iraqi, British or American. When your child is dead all that matters is your child is dead. So next time CNN use words like "collateral damage" or acceptable losses, Please" remember we are talking about a human beings

are tragic and important but the deaths of others are meaningless and worthless. That thinking will never stop war. War will stop when people recognize that all deaths are tragic and simpy refuse to kill.

It's not some big secret. Collateral damage and acceptable losses refer to dead humans who were killed in a certain context. They are simply more accurate ways of discussing different categories of dead humans.

There's no moral or ethical difference between a child getting blown up in a missile strike or an adult. I believe that to award that sort of privilege is to inherently fall into an appeal to emotion, which is, of course, seriously problematic.

The question should be: are any non-combatant deaths justified during a military campaign. Or perhaps a more careful definition of who is an "agent" in the combat is required before that question can even be asked. Likewise, the question presupposes culpability resting with the force that fired the missile, which itself may be arguable.

EG for example, a family resides in Bogvania. Bogvania is at war with Trogostad. The Bogvanian family is headed by Bob, who is a junior officer in the Bogvanian armed forces. The Bogvanian armed forces has started a war with Trogostad, but fearing Trogostad's superior forces, have de-centralized their operations, so that Bob, effectively, operates his forces from his apartment. So if Trogostad bombs Bob's apartment and kills Bob and his 2 year old son, who was at fault? Is this a correct definition of what a collateral loss would be?

it is not acceptable to kill anyone out of fear of what they may 'become'-

NO ONE has knowledge of what a person will grow to be, even if the person is Jesus the Christ,Gandhi, Einstien, DaVinci, or Tiger Woods-

And killing children, regardless of their age (we are all children in many ways) and calling it anything other than pre-meditated murder is stupid word-play. "Collerateral damage" doesn't change the fact that people are dead as a result of the bad CHOICES of those who have too much power and too little conscience.

And it is wrong-

That is "Bluers" law- break it at your peril- and you'll learn regret is one of the most painful and common ailments of living past puberty.

Collateral damage is supposed to be "people we accidentally killed while we were trying to kill someone else." But it appears to very common that the civilians were the real targets, and calling them collateral damage is a way of lying and saying they weren't the intended targets.

Collateral damage now frequently seems to mean "Those civilians we deviced to slaughter." But that isn't an accepted meaning, because it isn't the official meaning. So I think you are wrong that everyone knows what those terms mean.

but whenever I use it I'm really referring to raw steak, then it doesn't matter what people think it means. It is being used to mean something entirely different, and it's being used that way to deceive people precisely because it has a generally accepted meaning.

That generally accepted meaning doesn't mean that it's really peanut butter on the plate. Reality is what it is.

So if the army keeps using the term Collateral Damage, that doesn't make it really so.

Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. It's like the words peanut butter means peanut butter half the time and raw steak the other half. It's actually a more insidious way of manipulating language because we can't just throw it out as propaganda every single time.

there are certainly some situations where the strategic importance of a target, even with the highest level of precautions against civilian deaths, will still kill a few innocent parties. It's bound to happen periodically. Happened all the time in WWII.

BTW since WWII we have these fancy smancy "precision guided" missiles.

The Hezbollah are launching "shots in the dark" while the sophisticated Israeli Military is practicing collective punishment by SYSTEMATICALLY destroying an entire Nation. Both sides are committing war crimes but Israel's digressions are much more egregious because it has the technology to NOT trash Lebanon's infrastructure.

on how precise these precision guided bombs actually are... eg does anyone remember how wonderful the Patriot Missiles apparently were during Gulf War I, and then we found out that they didn't actually hit shit.

And no one, no matter what they may say, do, or think, can void their membership in the family of humanity- It sometimes makes people 'feel' better to think of fellow humans who behave, live or believe in things that we personally cannot embrace "animals" or "inhuman"- but the reality, the truth is... we are all connected, for good, and at our worst.

Every life is a life that began as an innocent child- were we all to treat each other as if 'we' were 'them' we'd have 'heaven on earth'-

And each one of us are either part of trying to make that happen, or willing to keep the status quo.

that way. Collateral damage used to mean civilians that got in the way, or that no one knew about after an assessment that the targets to be hit were strictly military, for instance bombing bases or navy ships. Even the Japanese, when they bombed Pearl Harbor were attacking military targets, not civilian neighborhoods because there might be military in them.

What is going on in Lebanon is murder not collateral damage. There never are acceptable losses IMHO, but the military sometimes calculates that there would be so many casualties of military for an action taken. This is not meant to be civilians. But I guess we crossed that line when we bombed Dresden in WWII.

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